Gotham Knights
by ohiojones
Summary: This story arc after Batman Begins introduces my take on a young Barbara Gordon, and her developement into Batgirl. Bruce Wayne also hones his skills as Batman, and affirms his place as a protector of Gotham City. Nightwing may make an appearance as well!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: I am not affiliated with DC comics or Warner Brother's Studios. The work below is based off of character's and events from the Christopher Nolan film adaptation of the Batman franchise. Please post your thoughts in the form of reviews. I appreciate constructive criticism and am not beyond making major changes if merited. Thank you all for reading and enjoy!**

"Absolutely not, Barbara. You're too young to go traipsing through Gotham on your own."

"I'm four-_teen_, dad. I can walk a couple of blocks on my own."

"A couple of blocks in this city scares _me_ to death, and I'm a police officer. Just wait here at the station until I finish working, and then I'll take you to practice. I'm almost finished, I swear."

Jim Gordon felt the lie leave his lips. His work never seemed to be finished, lately. He was a good cop. Maybe the last good cop Gotham had left. If he didn't process the arrests made today, who knew what might happen? But he was also a father. And the last thing he wanted was his daughter getting impatient and running off on her own.

Barbara must have read his mind.

"You are not!"

"Not what?"

"Almost finished. You'll be in your office filling out cop-forms all night and I'll miss practice – again! What's the point of putting me in Aikido if I never train? If these streets are so dangerous the least you could do is give me a fighting chance."

She reminded Gordon so much of her mother. The fiery red hair; the intense green eyes; even the way she set her jaw in a certain way when she was bracing for an argument. And, also like her mother, she seemed to be right ninety nine point nine percent of the time.

"Alright."

"Alright, I can go? Or alright, that's enough; you're going into a cell?"

"I promised you I'd never do that again, and I won't. Besides, you said you wanted to see what jail was like."

"I was _eight_, and you locked me up by myself in a cell with nothing to do. No one would let me out, even when I had to use the _bathroom_!"

"That's what jail is like." Admittedly, Gordon wasn't particularly proud of the way he had gone about that. It had sort of gotten away from him.

"Ha ha. Lesson learned. I got it the first time, but it was still _mean_ – wait a sec. Are you letting me go?"

Gordon sighed a father's sigh of lost battles. How did the saying go? You have to let them fly on their own some time?

"Yes, you can go. While it's still light out. But _call me_ to come pick you up. I'm nervous enough about this during the day; don't push your luck after dark."

"YES!! I'll be so careful dad you don't even need to worry I've got my pepper spray and my whistle and my phone and my wristlocks are getting better so I promise you have nothing to be…." her voice faded as she crossed the crowded police station. Gordon smiled as he watched her turn and practically bolt for the door.

He had done the math long ago, before her mother had passed away. Back then, he was trying to calculate his chances of winning an argument with his wife. He was no statistician, but the way he figured it, he stood a chance of winning an argument with either of those women about once every three years. This was no time to start a losing battle. Besides, he had a feeling this town was taking a turn for the better.

Gordon picked up his phone, and he dialed.

The number he had been given had a local area code. Fake. It was patched to a phone company in Canada, which forwarded the call to a number in the Philippines, where it bounced back to a basement in Stamford, Connecticut. That was as far as Gordon had been able to trace the call. There, it was fed into a voice-over IP internet phone service via proxy server to Guam, where it rode submarine fiber optic lines back to the west coast. A San Luis Obispo radio station unknowingly rebroadcast the encrypted call over the airwaves, while a computer on the edge of town processed, decrypted, unpacked, and re-encrypted the call, sending it as a security software feed to a satellite TV provider in Los Angeles. The call hitched a ride with a rerun of Cheers to a satellite in orbit over Texas, where it was broadcast back down to Gotham City on a secure line that only one man had access to.

* * *

Bruce Wayne's left breast pocket began to vibrate. He had given Lieutenant Gordon this number in case something happened during the day, when the signal wouldn't do any good. They had only used it a handful of times.

"If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I need to take this. Lucius, would you mind….?"

"Not at all, Mr. Wayne." Lucius Fox sorted through the stack of quarterly reports in front of him, and prepared to continue the meeting in the owner's absence, as the board had become quite accustomed to. "Try not to let this one keep you up all night." The boardroom filled with chuckles from the men and disapproving sighs from the women.

"I'll do my best." They would have to come up with some other alibi eventually, but for now the ruse of rushing off to meet actresses and supermodels was proving quite effective. "Don't wait up for me though." Bruce wondered for a moment what it would be like to actually have a supermodel or an actress waiting for him on the other end of this phone.

Stepping out into the hallway, Bruce checked for observers, then pressed a panel between two columns and slipped into a side passage known only to himself, Lucius, and Alfred.

He pulled out the sleek maroon com-device he had had Lucius put together for him. It was simple – no screen, no numbers, just one black button in the center to answer a call. James Gordon was the only man in the world who had this number.

"Gordon?" Bruce took care to use the low, gruff voice he had adopted as part of Batman's persona. "What's wrong?"

"Sorry to call you on this line again so soon, but this probably shouldn't wait until after dark."

"Go ahead."

"We picked up a middleman for one of the newer gangs last night, and I have strong suspicions he can lead us to a much bigger fish. Problem is, we don't have any physical evidence against him, and we're getting close to the 24-hour detention period before we have to either charge him or let him go."

Bruce was already on his way to the secret elevator to the basement of Wayne Tower, where the applied science archives had become his temporary headquarters until the mansion was rebuilt.

"And you need me to get you some evidence?" This had become pretty routine work for Batman. The Gotham City Police were tied down with red tape, and what should have been a simple process of turning arrests into convictions often fell through due to the technicalities of the legal system.

"We picked him up at the scene of what looked like a drug deal. A citizen phoned in some suspicious activity and we sent an officer to check it out. He was a rookie beat cop, though, and rather than calling in backup so we could bust the whole deal, he tried to deal with it himself. Shots were fired, the two cars drove off, and our boy managed to bring in the one guy on the scene who wasn't shooting, and who now claims he was just passing by."

"The officer didn't catch any plates?"

"Phony. If you can find out anything, _anything_ at all we can leverage this guy with, we can charge him, or at least make him panic into saying something he shouldn't."

"How long do we have before you have to let him go?"

"We booked him at…" Bruce heard Gordon shuffling through paperwork. It sounded like there was a lot on his desk. "…2:38 this morning. If you can get me something on him in the next ten hours or so, we'd have a chance at taking down a pretty sizable drug ring."

"I'll see what I can do…"

* * *

"Here's the address. Thanks. I owe you one more." One more what, Gordon didn't really know. He seemed to be the one needing all the favors in this partnership they'd developed. What he did know was if this bat character ever needed anything from him, he wouldn't hesitate for a second.

* * *

Twelve minutes later, Batman was on the scene and making progress. He was at the same time surprised and unsurprised to hear that the drug deal had taken place at Thomas Wayne High School. He couldn't put anything past the criminals of this city, and that included bringing drugs to the school his father had helped to get rid of drugs twenty-five years ago. The school was abandoned now, a perfect place to keep away from watchful eyes. According to Lieutenant Gordon, the officer on scene had spotted four men exchanging goods near the basketball courts, not too far from their cars. Not wanting to risk revealing himself in the fading daylight, he surveyed the scene from a discreet spot on the roof of the school, between two gargoyles. One of them seemed to be looking at the same spot that Batman was.

"What do you think?" He joked to the carved beast. Its stone eyes continued to stare at the same place on the road below.

"That's what I thought, too." Parts of the area where the cars would have been parked seemed to be… shimmering… in the light of dusk. Pulling a pair of modified compact binoculars from his belt, he cycled through the filters while viewing the area in question. The UV filter showed him what he needed. Two strips of faintly glowing blue appeared along the sidewalk and trailed down the street in both directions. The binoculars sent a hi-res image of the tracks to his private server back at Wayne Tower. Within seconds, it matched the tire and track pattern to the make and model of the car Gordon's rookie had reported seeing. One of the cars from the drug deal must have driven through a UV reactive substance at some point. There were a handful of phosphors just off the top of Batman's head that might create these glowing tire tracks, and probably as many more he didn't know about. It was a good thing he had made it here before dark; the sunlight was what was illuminating the trail; the goggles only helped him to see it. If a forensics team had been on the scene, they would have picked this up even sooner than he had. Unfortunately, forensics wasn't usually dispatched for almost-drug-busts.

After glancing thoughtfully back and forth between the two directions the tracks led a few times, Batman turned to his stone sidekick, "Well, let's hope they were driving on the right side of the road."

He fired his grappling gun at a nearby building in the direction of the logical 'forward' path of the car, slightly taken aback at how simple it had been. Gotham PD must have really been stretched thin. Any seasoned detective should have been able to handle this, if Gordon had been able to spare one. The retractor on the gun snapped taught just as Batman fastened it to the balance point on his belt, and he was pulled forward and upward. Spreading his arms and activating the electrolysis pad in his glove stiffened the memory cloth in his cape to help stabilize his ascent. As he approached the building, he sped up the ascender and prepared his body for one of the riskiest aerial tricks he had developed in the last few months. In one motion, he slackened his cape, put his feet forward to run along the wall, and stopped the ascender, letting his momentum propel him upward just long enough to retrieve the magnetic grapple from the drainpipe it had fixed itself to. For a fraction of a second, he stood horizontally against the side of the building, trapped between his upward momentum and the laws of gravity. After a moment of gut-wrenching weightlessness, he twisted his body around, pushing off the wall into a dive. Once he had begun falling fast enough, he spread his wings to glide a few blocks, finding a place to land and do it all again. Traveling this way was considerably less conspicuous than taking the Tumbler, he had found.

Half gliding, half swinging above the streets of Gotham, he followed the tracks to a warehouse in the shipping district, not far from where he had taken down Carmine Falcone a few months earlier. Batman made his way to the roof silently. It hadn't taken long for a bigger, badder drug ring to spring up in Falcone's absence. Inside, the warehouse was crowded with gang muscle. At least thirty men, all with automatic weapons, patrolled between the crates and massive shipping containers. The car that had been at the school, along with half a dozen others, was being loaded with small wooden crates stamped in Arabic. One of the crates was open. Batman moved to a different window, peering in at a better angle to see… not drugs…. guns. Eight Uzis neatly nestled in a bed of straw. There were dozens of crates in various shapes and sizes waiting to be distributed.

Gordon didn't know how right he was; if they could bring in whoever was in charge of this operation, they could save a lot of civilian's and police officer's lives. Removing the sonic emitter from his boot, he activated the new feature he had added. In addition to the one that attracted bats, the device now included a frequency that was audible to humans on the subconscious level. A dampener in his mask's earpieces protected him from the mild but debilitating headache that was slowly incapacitating the men below. For now, each of them thought he was the only one closing his eyes and rubbing his temple in pain. Batman had a few seconds before they noticed that everyone had momentarily dropped their guard. As discreetly but as quickly as possible, he broke one of the glass panels in the window, fired the magnetic grapple at the open crate, and reeled back an Uzi. After replacing the emitter in his boot, he took a few more hi-res photos, trying to get as many faces as possible. Two hours after he had gotten the call from Gordon, he was on his way back to the precinct to deliver the evidence he had asked for.

* * *

Barbara watched from the street as the dark figure flew – actually flew! – to the rooftop of her father's station. She was glad she hadn't waited back at the dojo for her father; this was too cool to miss. This bat man really was real, and he was working with the police! She wondered if her dad knew. She had been standing still on the street wondering about Gotham's new knight in blackened armor for approximately twelve seconds. Too long to be ignored by the gaunt figure in the alley ten feet away…


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: I am not affiliated with DC comics or Warner Brother's Studios. The work below is based off of character's and events from the Christopher Nolan film adaptation of the Batman franchise. Please post your thoughts in the form of reviews. I appreciate constructive criticism and am not beyond making major changes if merited. Thank you all for reading and enjoy!**

The gaunt hooded figure watched the girl from the shadows of his alley as she approached from down the street. Such a pretty young thing; so delicate, so graceful. Red hair flowing like a Caledonian goddess, a light bag slung over her shoulder, and trendy clothing clinging to a nicely developing body all told him she would be perfect, if he could take her by surprise. As she moved, he thought to himself how once, a long time ago, before the depression, before the drugs, he might have wanted to make a pass at her. In her mid to late teens, she might have been a few years too young for him even back then. But he didn't have her in mind for himself, no. Some acquaintances of his in the Narrows would be quite interested in a pretty young morsel like this. Interested enough to cancel his debts, and maybe interested enough for him to get some smack, too. He didn't even know how long he'd been lying there in the alley since he got his last fix, but he knew it had been too long.

His heart sank. She was already walking by, quickly. Too quickly. It was dusk, and the streets were empty at the moment, but he couldn't count on that for long. Even in his weakened, withdrawal-induced state of deliria he was certain he could handle her alone. But if she managed to get out a scream, if she managed to draw even one foolish person to her aide… he wasn't sure he could survive another beating. His bones and muscles ached; his skin crawled with irritation; he hadn't eaten anything in what seemed like weeks. He was still larger and stronger than most, but what was once the impressive, hulking form of his body had withered to a mere skeleton by comparison. The thought of wasting away there in that alley started to become his reality. And then Gotham gave him an early Christmas present.

She stopped, gawking at the roof of the police station for what might as well have been hours.

He snickered to himself. Everyone seemed to think they were so safe this close to the police precinct. They didn't know how much the cops had on their plate lately. He could probably attack someone on the front steps and get away with it. Now, here was this beautiful little package, not ten feet from him, just begging to be snatched up. The ache in his jaw from the last time he had tried to mug someone still hadn't subsided. But that had been a grown man, this was just a girl. A totally oblivious, completely unprepared girl, just standing there, waiting for him…

* * *

Barbara felt a cold, clammy hand close over her mouth tightly. Trying to let out a scream, she found she could barely breathe. The hand was clamped firmly over her mouth and nose, suffocating her every bit as much as silencing her. A flash of her father telling her to call him when she finished practice was all the regret she had time for.

"Come on now, sweetie. Time to take a little nap." The voice that hissed in her ear was anything but sweet, and a nap was last thing it made her think of. This guy had some nerve, attacking the fourteen year old daughter of a police Lieutenant, less than a block from the police station. What was he, on drugs?

The thought was sobering. Judging from the sickly sweat she tasted on his hand, and the unnatural strength of his scrawny grip, he probably either _was_ on drugs, or looking for them. Neither of these possibilities would make him a very reasonable man. She reached for the pepper spray in her bag, but that had been the first thing she had dropped in her surprise. Already being dragged back toward the alley, she flailed and searched for a weakness in his grip. His hand over her mouth was like iron. Clawing and pulling at it with both hands wasn't getting her anywhere. Where was his other hand?

_No time to figure it out, I'll just have to let it find mine_.

Reaching back with both hands, she found her attacker's head. The bony ridges and stubble slick with sour sweat confirmed her suspicions. He was having withdrawals from some kind of opiate. Her hands found his eyes, and she began poking, scratching, gouging in any way she could. Hoping that the pain or surprise might loosen his grip, she settled for his free hand coming back and grasping her by the wrist.

_All I needed._

"Grab my wrist" was a basic exercise that Oka Sensei had the class practice at the beginning of every class, as a warm up. By the end of their first lesson, most beginning students understood the basic concepts of torque, leverage, and pressure as they applied to the human body. Barbara was far from a beginning student.

Dozens of variations on one simple technique flashed through her mind, and she settled on _kote gaeshi,_ a simple-but-effective throw. Turning her hand and spiraling her open palm around to the top of the man's wrist, Barbara twisted her forearm, while applying downward pressure on her attacker's grip. In the split-second after his grip on her wrist had broken, she brought her free hand into the equation. The subtle placement of her hand on his was what allowed her to inflict the desired amount of pain in such a large, strong opponent. And she did.

"Aaghgh! Bitch! You broke my damn hand!" He was exaggerating, of course. But he had been in enough pain to loosen his grip on her face enough for her to take a much-needed gasp of air. How long had she just gone without breathing? Thirty seconds? It didn't seem that long to hold her breath, but fighting _and_ holding her breath was a serious ordeal.

Not giving her an opportunity to finish the throw, the pallid form behind her clutched her forcefully by the hair and threw her to the ground in the alley.

_Wow. This is _way_ different than practicing in the dojo._ Barbara didn't have much time to think on this, before the ghastly shape was charging at her again, clearly hoping to put her down quickly. With a step, a pivot, and a well-placed hand, she redirected him into the wall of the alleyway. Half of Aikido was letting the opponent do as much of the work as possible.

Ready for more, the ruffian pushed himself off of the wall with a grunt and swung a tightly curled right fist at Barbara. Reacting to the textbook form of the attack, she snapped her own arm into place just in time to deflect his blow. She couldn't keep this up for long. He was stronger than her by far, and unlike her sparring partners, he wasn't using his strength for the sake of helping her improve her technique. It occurred to her that there was one other significant difference between her attacker and any of her training partners. He wasn't taking _Ukemi_.

_Ukemi_, the art of falling, or receiving a technique, was a big part of what made Aikido look harmless to the untrained eye. There were no blows exchanged, no bones broken. Because half of the training in Aikido was how to receive these techniques safely, and transition into another quickly, both attack and defense could be practiced quite vigorously without significant bodily harm. A casual observer would see nothing more than an improvised dance, of sorts. Each partner moved, not only to gain an advantageous position, but to avoid injury from whatever technique their opponent was employing against them. If the same technique were applied on an untrained opponent…

Barbara took advantage of an opening. Guiding her assailant backward using the pain of an elbow lock, she quickly dropped to one knee and cut downward with his arm as though it were independent from a human body. The resulting shift in forces drew him to the ground faster than any amount of strength could prevent. Where any Aikidoka would have rolled to absorb the impact of the fall, this brute smashed to the pavement with the audible _slap_ of flesh against rock. He groaned for a moment, then went limp.

Barbara stood over the unmoving form for a moment, trying to be certain he wasn't getting up again any time soon. Satisfied with herself, disappointed in herself, she turned toward the mouth of the alley to pick up her bag, and prepared to face the music she was sure her father would be playing for her…

* * *

Batman watched the brief battle from the rooftop above the alley. He had just brought Gordon the intel he had asked for at the precinct station. The exchange had been brief, ending with Gordon yet again professing his endless gratitude. He was a good cop, and a good man, but not for the first time, Batman wondered if Gordon really understood his dedication to Gotham City. He would have to come up with an inoffensive way of telling Gordon that these weren't personal favors that needed to be kept track of.

A loud oath had drawn his attention in the direction of the alley just as he had been leaving the police station. When he saw that a teenage girl was being attacked, he instinctively moved to intercede. By the time he had traveled down the block across the rooftops, though, she seemed to be handling herself just fine. She seemed to be using one of the Japanese grappling forms, with some adaptations for street effectiveness.

The fight was over in less than a minute, assuming it had started around the time he had heard the big man scream. Wisely, the girl stood and watched her attacker lay motionless on the ground for a moment before turning and heading in the direction of the police station. Gotham needed more citizens who weren't afraid to defend themselves, Batman thought to himself. Perhaps Wayne Enterprises could sponsor some pro bono self-defense classes for teens…

The thought was interrupted by the sight below. The lout had risen from the pavement, unhurriedly, and picked up something that glinted in the emerging moonlight. He was now heading for the mouth of the alley with his improvised blade. Batman wondered, could the young lady below handle herself as well against a bladed attacker? Not a risk he wanted to take.

Foregoing thoughts of deception and intimidation, he dropped straight in. Thirty feet down, at least, the fall would have killed him if he hadn't opened his cape at the last moment. Landing squarely in front of the hooded man, Batman saw a face all too familiar. That hollow, sunken face, the desperation in the eyes, the shakiness in his hand as he held the jagged piece of metal. He might as well have been looking into the eyes of the man who shot Martha and Thomas Wayne twenty years ago. The words of an old friend drifted through his memory.

…_crime and drugs, preying on the desperate, creating new Joe Chills every day…_

The man who killed Bruce Wayne's parents was dead. But how many families might this man standing before him tear apart, out of sheer desperation? Batman knew first hand about the tragedy taking place in Gotham – it was the reason he had put on this mask – but it had been a while since he had stared it in the face.

The situation was, for the most part, diffused simply by his presence. Standing between the girl and her attacker, he was wearing a three hundred _thousand_ dollar suit of advanced armor, and the delinquent was holding a jagged piece of a broken hubcap. Doubting the man was in any hurry to get physical with him being trounced by a teenaged girl, he decided to try reason.

"You've got three seconds to drop the weapon." The metal clanged to the ground before he finished his sentence.

"I'm placing you under citizen's arrest for the aggravated assault of a minor." The bindings he used on the criminal's wrists were soft but unyielding. Once he had secured the attacker, he turned his attention to the young lady standing at the entrance of the alley...

* * *

Barbara had really been hoping to watch the bat man mop the floor with this guy. She hadn't even seen where he had come from. She had thought she heard the goon getting up behind her and turned around, and there he was: six foot two of pure awesome. Then he went and tied the guy up without so much as a single punch. _Some mysterious hero_. His voice made her regret the thought

"I know this man tried to hurt you, and that's not something I'd expect you to forgive or forget easily. But I do think it would be helpful if you were to make a statement to the police about what happened. I'm not exactly a reliable witness." He flashed her a corny smile. He was kinda cute. Well, his chin was, anyway.

"Miss. Miss?" Barbara hadn't realized he had asked her a question.

"Do you think you feel up to talking to a police officer?"

"Oh. God." The words came out without her permission, but they were, nonetheless, exactly what she was thinking. The severity of the situation had just hit her. She had just been attacked by a drugged out street thug, on her way home from the dojo, after dark.

"My Dad's gonna murder me."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: I am not affiliated with DC comics or Warner Brother's Studios. The work below is based off of character's and events from the Christopher Nolan film adaptation of the Batman franchise. Please post your thoughts in the form of reviews. I appreciate constructive criticism and am not beyond making major changes if merited. Thank you all for reading and enjoy!**

"I don't care how well you fought, Barbara. You're a young girl, and this is the most dangerous city in the country right now." Traffic was heavy, and Jim Gordon had been giving a detailed 'I told you so' lecture for the last hour. "What if there had been more than one of them? What if this bat-character hadn't shown up when he had? And what if he's not such a great guy himself? Did you ever think of that?"

"I know, dad. I told you, it won't happen again." Barbara had decided to take the simple 'sorry daddy' route on this one. On the way back to the station, she had wracked her brain for ways to justify her being out after dark, but the fact that she actually had been attacked gave her father all the leverage he would need. Best to simply hang her head in shame and beg for forgiveness. If she could only keep her mouth shut.

"Damn right it won't happen again." He was clearly surprised by her passive attitude, but he wasn't going to let her off with a simple apology. "You're grounded for the rest of the school year. And you're on house arrest for the summer. I don't want you leaving the house alone... until. - until..."

"Until when, I'm out of college?" Her passive streak was nearing its limit. She knew she messed up, but there was still 9 weeks left of school! And the entire summer? "You realize you'll never keep me couped up for half a year, right?" She regretted the words before they were out of her mouth, but she couldn't shut herself up anymore. Now she just hoped he didn't take it as a challenge.

"That sounds to me like a challenge." He held her stare for a few moments, daring her to push any further. Then he looked back to the road, and sighed. "But no, I can't keep you couped up that long."

"Barbara." The tender look he gave her then was so different from a moment ago that she wondered how it could have come from the same man. "I don't know how to keep you safe."

"Dad, I – "

"Just listen. Setting aside this little power struggle we're having, and the fact that you've got a rebellious streak in you longer than my backlog at the station-" Barbara couldn't help but let out a giggle. Her father joked so rarely lately. He smiled with her a moment before going on.

"All that aside, I'm genuinely afraid for my daughter's life. And the fact that you _aren't_ worries me even more."

"You think I'm _not_ afraid? Seriously? This is the scariest my life has ever been. I feel safer in the presence of a faceless vigilante than a police officer. I live in the "nice" part of a city full of scum. I can't take the bus full of hookers and drug dealers, I obviously can't walk the streets safely, I wouldn't dare try to keep a bike from getting stolen in this town. Even if I did stay home all the time, there's a pretty good chance I wouldn't be safe there either." Tears were welling up in her eyes, iand that damn lump was growing n her throat. "I'm afraid, dad, but I refuse to let fear control my life!" She had never admitted being afraid to anyone, including herself. Her father carried enough of a burden being one of the only clean cops in this city. He was the last person she ever wanted to complain to. Even tonight.

A honk from the car behind them stirred her father out of his shock. He couldn't know what to say to that. She barely knew what to do with it. He was doing everything he knew how to make this city a safer place for her. For everyone. At the moment, that was little comfort to her.

They spent the rest of the ride home in silence. Barbara managed to suppress her tears long enough to get to her bedroom, and then cried herself to sleep for the first time in years.

The next morning brought a pleasant change of mood to both of them. For the first time in months, they ate breakfast together. Gordon yawned between sips from his coffee mug.

"You know, Babs, I was thinking," he was interrupted as Barbara began choking and spitting into her orange juice glass. "What's wrong? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she choked out through breathy chuckles. "You just caught me off-guard. You haven't called me Babs in years."

"Since I took the training wheels off your bike and told you you were a big girl now, if I remember correctly."

"Oh my god, that's right! After that I told everyone to call me Barbara because it was a big girl name!"

The laughter in their small breakfast nook was a welcome relief from the usual stress in the air. Both of them seemed to have a bit more respect for one another since the previous night's encounter and subsequent argument. Like a long overdue forest fire, their blazing tempers had relieved enough tension for new growth to begin. Barbara was the first to break the tranquil silence.

"Dad, I'm really sorry. About everything. Gotham, that junkie... Mom..."

"Barbara, you know you had nothing to do with your mother getting sick."

"I know that, Dad. I know. It's just, raising me alone has taken a real toll on you, and I'm sorry its been so hard."

Jim Gordon's eyes met his daughter's, and after a moment Barbara noticed his lips moving as if he were about to speak. Instead, he reached across the table, placed his hand over hers, and squeezed.

"Its been hard on both of us, Babs. I'm sorry too." A narrow line of moisture glistened on Gordon's cheek. Barbara hadn't noticed his eyes water up, or the tear roll down his face, but there it was. The ghost of the last tear shed for his wife, and for their life together before Gotham City.

Barbara changed the subject.

"Well, what were you thinking?" Her father still seemed to be in a surreal state. He was still squeezing her hand on the table and gazing at a point just past her head.

"Dad? 'You know Babs, I was thinking…' What were you thinking?"

"Oh, that. Yes. I was thinking, this transportation situation of ours is unacceptable. You made a valid point last night. The streets aren't safe. Public transit isn't safe. Our own home, god help us, probably isn't safe. I think its time we got that old bike of your mother's fixed up." His last words were accompanied by a nod and a wave of his coffee cup for emphasis.

Barbara's expression was simply dumbfounded. "Are you serious? I mean, that would be _awesome_, but I'm only fourteen. I won't be sixteen for… a year and a half."

"A year and two months, to be exact. Come on." Gordon gestured toward the garage and started to get up. Seeing his daughter's blank face and the fact that she wasn't getting up, he paused and gave her a clever smirk. "Come out to the garage."

Barbara hesitated a few moments, but ultimately followed her father to their garage. At the door, she finally pieced together her thoughts into a roughly coherent sentence. "Wait, you're telling me that you, a cop, who's always freaking out about danger, are about to let me, your danger-magnet of a daughter, get onto a _motorcycle_, more than a year before I'm even legally allowed to ride one? You're hurting my brain, dad."

Her father was already moving boxes of old junk out of the way to clear a path to the back corner of the garage. "Like I said, you made some compelling points last night. I'd rather see you get from A to B as quickly and safely as possible. Believe me, if we could afford to get you a car, I'd be much more comfortable with that. But as it sits right now, I feel like this is one of the best things I can do to keep you out of trouble."

Helping with the boxes, Barbara started to let herself get excited. "What about a license? Are you gonna pull some cop strings and get me one of those witness protection alternate identities? Or are we just gonna whip me up a fake license that says I'm… say… 21?"

Gordon let out half of a chuckle, which turned into a cough from the dust now filling the air in the garage. Once he had it under control, he finished the laugh he had started, and gave his daughter a look of amusement. "I think you underestimate my belief in the law. At age fifteen you're entitled to apply for a hardship and emergency permit. It allows you to drive, or in this case, ride, to and from work or school. Considering the shape this city's in, I shouldn't have any problems getting the DMV to approve your application."

Her brief daydreams of joyriding the streets at all hours of the night having just been crushed, Barbara was still pretty happy with the prospect. "To and from school, huh? I can live with that. But I still don't turn 15 until June."

Gordon pushed the last plastic storage tub out of the way, exposing the covered shape in question.

"Well, I thought of that too. If I remember correctly, your mother had just torn this thing apart for some modifications she wanted to make." He pulled the canvas cover away to reveal the skeletal frame of his late wife's project bike. Barbara knew more about it than he had realized.

"1968 BMW R60/2. Fully restored engine, electrical, brakes…" She stepped around to the back of the bike and picked up a box full of chrome. "She was building a custom exhaust system. She said it was quiet, but not quiet enough. I think she wanted it quiet enough not to wake me up when she got home from the garage late. You guys had a fight about it once, I remember."

The Lieutenant was always taken off guard by Barbara's keen memories of life before her mother died. "Sounds like you know more about it than I do. She should have had all the parts here, just needs to be put back together. Trouble is, I'm nowhere near the mechanic your mother was. I figured between the two of us, we'd be lucky to get it roadworthy before your birthday."

Barbara was already at work sorting through the parts, attempting to organize nearly five years worth of misplaced clutter into a decent workspace. She paused to look up at her father. "So, you were counting on our combined incompetence to buy you the extra 2 months?"

"Something like that, yes."

"And if we get it roadworthy _before_ I turn fifteen?"

A mild smirk pulled at one corner of Gordon's mouth. "Let's just say that I've developed a certain… tolerance, for breaking the law when necessary."

In the following weeks, Barbara did little besides eat, sleep, and work on that bike. Lieutenant Gordon had to remind her on a daily basis to get her homework done, and rush her to get to the dojo on time for training, while in the past she had always been quite diligent about her studies, both in the classroom and on the mat. Time she ordinarily would have spent in the library catching up on homework, she now spent checking out automotive repair manuals, and cruising bike restoration forums online. She even figured out how to finish the custom exhaust system her mother had started.

Once, about a month before her 15th birthday, Gordon came home from the station to find Barbara on the nearly finished motorcycle, legs tucked up along the rear fender, torso laid down on the gas tank, and her head gently resting on the instrument console. Truthfully, she looked a bit small to ride the bike safely. He had thought the same about her mother, though, and she had given him quite an earful when he brought it up. She had built a starter bike for Barbara when she was about nine, and the girl couldn't have been more of a natural.

"Time to hit the mats, Babs." She had missed training 3 times this week, and he wasn't about to sacrifice one aspect of her safety for another. Ever since that junkie had attacked Barbara, he had congratulated himself silently for putting her in martial arts early in life. He wouldn't be so proud of himself if she were attacked again and was thinking more about dynamos than defense. Even he had to admit, he had never _really _thought Barbara would ever be attacked. He had thought it better to be overly cautious than not cautious enough. But now, now that she _had_ been attacked, the fear that it may happen again was very real, and the likelihood in a Father's mind seemed to double with each passing day.

As he headed back toward the kitchen, a faint sputtering and a whisper-soft whirring caught his ear. He turned and opened the garage door again to find Barbara revving up the modified bike. Gordon could scarcely believe how quiet the bike was running.

"Finished it today." Barbara had noticed the Lieutenant's jaw agape in disbelief. Her voice was barely above a normal conversational volume. "This guy online modded his bike a few years ago to run near silent. He posted the designs on his website; they're not much different from what mom came up with. I sort of used ideas from both. I gotta say, I'm pretty happy with the result."

"It certainly won't wake the neighbors. Much quieter than when your mother came tearing home on it for the first time." He leaned his head a bit closer to the motor. "Are you sure this is a motorcycle engine, not a... fish tank pump?"

Lips pulled smugly to one side, Barbara's tone was only half defensive. "Fishtanks don't run this quiet, Dadio." She moved a rosy lock away from her face with a blackened hand. "So? Can I ride to the dojo?"

Gordon took a fast, deep breath at the anticipated question, then hesitated a moment before answering. "I don't know, Barbara. Its still a month before we can get you that permit."

"What happened to all that talk about 'tolerance for breaking the law?' Were you just flapping your gums because you didn't think I could finish it in time?" The injured, offended, adolescent look she had worn a month earlier had returned, but this time she also looked flat-out mad.

"Barbara, its not that I don't have faith in your riding capabilities. You're your mother incarnate when it comes to motorcycles. I admit, I thought we'd be dealing with a matter of days or a week at most. But I can't have you riding illegally for a month! If you get pulled over without a license..."

Barbara interrupted him with a mock-innocent voice.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, officer. Maybe you know my father, Lieutenant Jim Gordon? He's kind of a big deal..."

Gordon tried not to let his voice sound too agitated. There were some things it seemed like his daughter would never understand about police in Gotham.

"Depending on who stops you, that _might_ work. But I know most of the beat cops in this town and I'm not well liked by many of them. Chances are that mentioning my name will only put you at greater risk. I'm sorry, Babs. I'll take you to practice on the way to the station."

Putting on a pouty face that didn't altogether fit her personality, Barbara made one last ditch effort to sway her father. "Just this once, Dad? I just finished it! I want to see how she rides. That's all. I'll wait till after my birthday to ride it again, I promise."

Once again drawn into how much she looked like her mother, Gordon couldn't bring himself to deny his daughter's wish. It wasn't just her project, after all. Her mother, his wife, had put a great deal of work and love into that machine. He owed it to his late wife as much as to Barbara to see this bike on the road.

"All right. But just this once. And I'm following you. I want to see this baby on the road as much as you do."

**Sorry for the cliffhanger, but its been a long wait on this chapter. I had a major block for a while after the dark knight came out. (Kinda pushes my story into AU territory). But I finally got over it! Next chapter will be short, but AWESOME! Please please PLEASE review, I would love to know what everyone thinks. Thanks for reading!**


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